


You Want a Piece of Me?

by SkepticalBeliever



Category: The 100 (TV), The 100 Series - Kass Morgan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Autumn, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Halloween Gift Exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:09:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27335452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkepticalBeliever/pseuds/SkepticalBeliever
Summary: Bellamy and Octavia run a struggling apple orchard that has been in competition with Griffin Acres for years. When Bellamy sees an advertisement in the local paper for a pie baking contest, he decides this event is exactly the sort of marketing boost the orchard needs. Little does he know, his rival, Clarke from Griffin Acres, has a similar plan. When the two go head to head with their apple pies, will sparks or fruit filling fly?
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Comments: 10
Kudos: 49
Collections: bellarkescord halloween gift exchange





	You Want a Piece of Me?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Luminouswriter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luminouswriter/gifts).



_FALL FEST PIE BAKING CONTEST_

_The 25 th annual Fall Fest is adding a new event that will whet even the pickiest of eaters’ appetites. Grab your pie tins, gather your spices, and guard your gourds for the first ever Seasonal Pie Bake Off! First place will take home $500 and be featured in _Arkadia’s Homes and Gardens _October issue!_

Bellamy ripped the press release out of the newspaper and pinned it to the bulletin board in the kitchen. Its haphazard placement seemed rather inconsistent with the otherwise spartan organization of the rest of the board. For once, Bellamy ignored the need to straighten up and, instead, dug through his mother’s old recipe box for her famous apple pie. Well, famous in the Blake family, at least.

He found the card dogeared and weathered, towards the back of the box with the other pastries. He ran his fingers along the words his mother wrote so long ago, the ink faded from black to grey.

“Whatcha got there?”

Bellamy turned to find his sister, Octavia, leaning against the door frame, leaves tangled in her hair, mud on her shoes, and a crisp green apple clutched in her hand. Clearly, someone had an adventure in the orchard.

“Just one of mom’s old recipes. Why are you eating our produce?”

Octavia chomped down, spraying juice in his general direction and grinned. “What’s the big deal? We always have excess anyway.”

“One,” Bellamy said, ticking items off on his fingers, “the more bushels we sell, the better the orchard does. Two, assuming that you’re right and we do have a surplus again this year, I’m going to need the extras to practice.”

“Practice for what?”

“How would you feel about entering a pie baking contest with me?”

Octavia scrunched her nose. “You’ve always been better at the domestic stuff than me, Bell. Why do you ask?”

“There’s a contest in a couple weeks. There’s a cash prize and an article about it in _Arkadia’s Homes and Gardens_. The money isn’t that much, but the article is free publicity and could really help drive foot traffic to the orchard. You know, give us some extra credibility with the bougie folks that live in the community.”

“Okay,” she sighed. “Where do we start?”

* * *

Arkadia was not a particularly large community in it and of itself, but they did tend to draw a respectable number of tourists thanks to the crystal blue lake the town initially settled beside and the quaint architecture of the Old Market. Every autumn, people from the city would drive down to see the changing leaves, enjoy the local hiking trails and shops, and stop to pick their own bushel of apples from one of the two local orchards. Unfortunately for the Blakes, the majority of the town’s visitors found their way to the other orchard, Griffin Acres.

Griffin Acres and Blake’s Apples were both founded around the same time the town was. Initially, the only thing that separated them was the town proper. Then the Griffins had a streak of good fortune, literally. An old aunt or cousin or whatever had died and left them a sizeable inheritance, which immediately went to the upkeep and expansion of their property. At some point or other, envy became an issue on the Blake side and snobbery on the Griffins’. Words and the occasional fists were exchanged and several generations later, the bitter rivalry prevailed.

In general, Bellamy thought it was stupid to continue the petty competition between the two; while Blake’s Apples was not nearly as profitable as Griffin Acres, they still made a tidy living and were getting by. But then he would run into Clarke Griffin, next in line to run Griffin Acres, and a general pain in his ass. Whenever he was obliged to spend more than a few minutes in her presence, the generations-old anger simmered, and he kind of understood why great grandpappy Blake ranted at length about the Griffin family.

In Clarke’s defense, she was not an overtly vile human being, or even a bad person. Generally, she was polite and had interesting things to say. But there was just something about her, an _air_ about her. She reeked of unconscious privilege. She probably meant well, Bellamy would grudgingly admit to himself whenever the irrational irritation faded, but she did not have a damn clue just how lucky she was. For so many reasons.

* * *

The weeks flew by and with them dozens of trial runs and countless apples. Bellamy had to get his pie perfect. For the orchard’s sake, as well as Octavia’s, but mostly to honor his mother’s memory. Aurora’s recipe deserved nothing less than his best.

Unfortunately, making apple pies almost daily severely depleted his baking ingredients. Which is why he found himself in the spice aisle of Green’s Grocers, the day before Fall Fest, frantically looking for the cinnamon.

“Cardamom, cassia, cayenne, celery salt, chives, cloves, coriander…oh c’mon where is the damn cinnamon?” Bellamy grumbled.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a woman walking away freeze in her tracks. She turned towards him with guilt written across her face.

“I’m pretty sure I snagged the last of it.”

“Of course, it would be _you_ ,” Bellamy scoffed. What were the odds that Clarke freaking Griffin would also be at Green’s, in the spice aisle, taking the last of the _one_ ingredient he still needed to make his dead mother’s pie recipe, on a Friday afternoon? He was no statistician, but he was fairly certain they were pretty slim, even in a town as small as Arkadia.

Just his luck.

Clarke took a long step towards him, lips pursed. He knew that look. It was an unsettlingly distracting look. “Have I offended you somehow? Last I checked, it wasn’t a social faux pas to go grocery shopping. So, what did I do this time, Bellamy?”

He took a deep breath through his nose. _There’s no point in getting into it with her. Remember how stupid the rivalry is? She didn’t do anything wrong, even if it’s annoying. Don’t be an ass._

“What would it take to get you to give me that cinnamon?”

“Under normal circumstances, you could just have it but, I actually need it.”

“For what?”

Clarke glanced pointedly down at Bellamy’s shopping basket. Flour, nutmeg, butter, corn starch…yeah, it was pretty obvious what he was up to. “C’mon, Bellamy. You’re not the only one entering that contest tomorrow. I have to represent my orchard, same as I’m sure you’re representing yours. It’s not personal.”

“Maybe not,” he shrugged, feeling the tension build in his shoulders, “but it still feels shitty knowing this is just another notch in Griffin Acres’ belt when that prize could go to someone who would actually benefit from it.”

“Excuse me?” She took a step forward. Absently, Bellamy noted the faint scent of bar soap. Surprising. He would have pegged her for a vanilla or floral kind of girl.

“You heard me, Princess,” he said, stepping into her space so that they were mere inches apart. “What do you need with a couple hundred bucks and a magazine article? Everyone knows your family is more than comfortable and if you really wanted some press, I’m sure your mom has plenty of connections to make that happen. Your participation in this just lessens the chances of everyone who can’t rely on nepotism to pave their way.”

“Well if that’s how you really feel, keep it,” Clarke growled, tossing the bottle of the ground spice into his basket. She stalked off, muttering unintelligible profanities under her breath.

* * *

_What am I doing here_? Bellamy gazed up at the glowing windows of the Griffin farmhouse from the driver’s seat of his truck. He heaved a sigh and clambered out, trudging up towards the front door.

He’d seen the Griffin house from the distance, driving by on his way out of town, but never this close. It was pristine, the kind of home that probably should be on the cover of Arkadia’s Homes and Gardens, not just a single-page article. But as he approached the door, he noticed something drawn on the door frame. Flowers. From the look of them, apple blossoms. They looked soft, delicate, and strangely whimsical amidst the otherwise orderly facade. It didn’t fit with the image he had of the family in his head.

He rapped his knuckles on the door three times. It was not terribly late. Hopefully, he was not disturbing them.

“I got it,” he heard a muffled voice call from within. The door swung open to reveal a young girl with flour dusting her dark curls. She gazed up at Bellamy curiously.

“Hi,” Bellamy said after a moment of surprise. Did he have the right house? “Um...is Clarke here?”

“Yeah, she’s in the kitchen,” she responded brightly. “Hey Cla-arke,” she called behind her in a sing-song voice, “that cute guy who drives you nuts is here.”

“ _What_?”

Bellamy heard a crash, a series of colorful curses, and stumbling down the hall. Clarke appeared before him with her cheeks and her blonde waves covered in flour and her blue eyes bright. What the hell did she and this kid get up to?

“Can I help you?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest.

 _Still mad_ , Bellamy thought. _That’s fair_.

“I came to apologize.” He held up a mostly full bottle of cinnamon and a jar of honey. “I didn’t end up needing much for my recipe and I thought you might still need some. The honey’s from the orchard.”

Clarke shook her head, exasperated. “You’re ridiculous. Wanna come in?”

Bellamy blinked. “Um...yeah. Sure.”

Clarke led him and the kid (Madi, he learned from her excited chattering) down the hall to the kitchen where apparently a baking explosion occurred. Seeing the sugar, spices, and batter splattered over the counter tops made Bellamy itch. But there on the kitchen table sat a beautifully made apple pie, the crust flakey and golden, and the fruit lovingly shaped into rose buds.

Madi gestured to it proudly. “What do you think, Bellamy? First prize worthy?”

“Honestly?” He glanced at Clarke, who was watching him closely. “It looks like it’s a tough one to beat.”

Madi beamed. Clarke sighed in what Bellamy suspected was relief. “Okay, you’ve taunted the competition enough for now. Why don’t you go change into something comfy and pick out a movie? I’ll be up in a few minutes.”

“With popcorn and cocoa?”

“Sure, Madi.”

“Sweet!” She kissed Clarke on the cheek and grinned at Bellamy as she left the room.

“Cute kid,” Bellamy said once they were alone. “What’s the story there?”

“I’m involved in Big Brothers Big Sisters. She’s my little. We get together a couple times a month to do something fun. She was the one who convinced me to enter the bake off. As you can see,” she said, gesturing to the messy room, “we had a lot of fun making our pie.”

Despite himself, Bellamy found himself grinning. “I really am sorry for what I said earlier. I was being a real…”

“Ass?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, you were. But it wasn’t _completely_ off base.” She poured two glasses of water and handed him one, sitting down at the table.

“I’m not an idiot, Bellamy. I know you, your family, and probably a bunch of other people think that I’m some spoiled princess. And I get it; I have been very lucky in a lot of ways and have had opportunities that don’t happen so easily for others. But there’s more to me,” she shrugged.

“Yeah, I’m starting to see that.”

There was a brief pause. For once, Bellamy didn’t feel the frustration he normally felt around Clarke. He felt...calm, content. It was unexpected but certainly not unpleasant.

“Did you really drive all this way just to bring me _used_ cinnamon?” Clarke asked.

“Hey! I also brought honey.”

“Right,” Clarke laughed. “Well, Madi’s mom had some in her pantry that she said we could use. But thanks for the gesture.”

“Glad it worked out.”

“So, I hinted at why I’m competing tomorrow. But what about you? Why are you so driven to win?”

“I like winning.”

“Seriously, Bellamy.”

“Seriously?” He gnawed on his lower lip. How to explain? “The orchard is doing...okay. But we could really use a boost in traffic. And...ever since my mom died, it’s been hard. Keeping things going. The orchard was always so special to her. She put up with a lot of shit over the years, but she always seemed at peace when she was outside, taking care of the trees. I just don’t want to be the reason it fails.”

Soft fingers brushed his own. Bellamy glanced up at Clarke in surprise. “I’m sorry about your mom. I kind of get how you feel; my dad died a couple years ago. But I know it’s not exactly the same.”

“Thanks. Sorry about your dad.”

“Thanks.”

It took a moment for Bellamy to realize Clarke had not let go of his hand. It took him another moment to realize he might not want her to. Too bad Madi came bounding back into the kitchen just as he was processing this strange new revelation.

“I should get going,” he sighed, standing up.

“See you tomorrow?” Clarke asked.

“Definitely. And good luck tomorrow; may the best baker win.”

Clarke smirked. “Oh, don’t worry. She will.”

* * *

Bellamy did not make a habit of biting his nails, but it was difficult to ignore the impulse as he watched the four judges thoughtfully chew their serving of his pie. He was not too concerned about Miller or Niylah. As long as he could recognize what he was eating, Miller was fairly easy to please. Bellamy recalled on more than one occasion, Miller joining him, Octavia, and his mom for dinner; there were never any leftovers. Niylah was also notoriously easy going. Bellamy guessed that she would probably say that everyone’s entries tasted delicious. Really, it didn’t matter much for the score.

What really stumped him was Gabriel and Indra.

Gabriel was a local doctor, but he was better known for his social media presence as a discerning foodie. Honestly, a good review from him would probably help just as much as any magazine article would. Then there was Indra. She was a fitness guru from the city but was basically accepted as a local due to all the time she spent around Arkadia on the hiking trails. Octavia idolized her. Bellamy suspected she would focus a little more on the nutritional value of each entry than her peers.

“Have they judged yours yet?” a voice asked beside him.

Bellamy glanced down at Clarke. Her eyes were fixed on the judges, like she was calculating.

“They’re trying it now. You?”

She nodded. “Earlier. I couldn’t get a good read on them. Even Miller kept on his poker face today.”

“I guess all we can do is wait.”

A while later, the contestants were called up.

“Thank you all for coming out to Fall Fest!” Miller crowed into the microphone. “It was a real _treat_ to judge the first ever bake off. Before I hand it off to my fellow judges, let’s give all of our contestants a round of applause.”

A smattering of polite applause rang throughout the community center. Bellamy heard a distinct whoop from somewhere off to the side and saw Octavia grinning widely at him. He waved and turned his attention back to the judges.

“Alright. Alright. Let’s hand it over to Niylah, who is going to tell us about our third-place winner.”

“Thanks, Miller. First of all, I want to say that this was a really hard decision. You all made incredible desserts and you should be very proud. But a few stood out. In third place, with easily the most beautiful presentation of the bunch…Clarke Griffin and Madi Smith!”

Madi turned to Clarke and beamed. Clarke hugged the kid tightly and laughed. Bellamy wasn’t sure who was glowing more. It was sweet.

Clarke disentangled herself from Madi and nudged her to go accept their prize. “Third place. Not bad, Princess,” Bellamy murmured teasingly.

Clarke swatted his arm without any real force. “Shut up, Bellamy.”

Next, it was Gabriel at the mic. “Our next winner was my personal favorite and I am not ashamed to say it. When this is over, I will probably be begging for the recipe because I’m going to need more of that flavor in my life. Without further ado, in second place...Bellamy Blake!”

His first reaction was disappointment. Aurora Blake’s apple pie was like a little slice of heaven. Anything less than first place was an insult. But he couldn’t ignore the importance of Gabriel Santiago’s endorsement. That felt pretty good.

What felt even better was the feel of Clarke’s hand giving his a tight squeeze before releasing him and pushing him forward to collect his prize. “Get up there!”

When this was over, he was probably going to have to reevaluate everything he thought he knew about Clarke Griffin.

“Finally, we are pleased to announce our first-place winner, who will be featured in _Arkadia’s Homes and Gardens_ ,” Indra said with an intensity that silenced the room. “In first place...John Murphy for his outstanding and, frankly, sinful sweet potato pie!”

Of all the names Indra could have uttered, Murphy’s was probably the last Bellamy expected. From the way Clarke’s eyebrows shot into her hairline, the same was true for her.

“Did you know that Murphy could cook?”

“Nope. You?

“Not a damn clue.” They turned and looked at one another, laughter bursting from their lips. Meanwhile, Murphy sauntered up to Indra and waved at the crowd.

Clarke leaned over to whisper in Bellamy’s ear, “What do you say to officially burying the hatchet? It’ll probably take our combined powers to take down Murphy next year.”

“I say, we should get a drink when this is over and talk strategy.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked, please leave some kudos and a review!


End file.
